1/17/2007

Enlightenment, humbug

I've been meaning to write a critique of the Enlightenment for some time now, but am still formulating my own argument. I am more of an Enlightenment man than not, but as a philosophy it is incomplete, and there is nothing within it that can both be true in a universal sense and also the sole domain of Christianity; what is needed is a generalized restatement of the neccessary parts.

In the meantime however Daniel Larison takes on the big E from his own Christian perspective, and I say bravo:

...it is entirely possible to accept that God created everything without having to insist upon the absolute literal interpretation of every number (many of which are clearly symbolic in any case) in the Bible. It is also possible to accept that God created all living things while also acknowledging that evolution is a plausible explanation for how living beings change over time. It is possible to despise Voltaire as an impious fool and loathe Locke as a treacherous stockjobbing mountebank and to view their ideas with disdain without insisting that we live in caves and eat raw meat while dying of the plague.